Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 75547 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75547 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
She steps close, palms flat on my chest, fingers curling into cotton like she’s trying to hold the words steady where I said them. “You okay?” she asks, quiet, a little breathless.
“Better than.” My voice scrapes on the way out. I let it. “Say it again.”
Her mouth curves. “I love you.”
I lean in and kiss her before my brain can throw any more stops onto the track. It’s not the kind of kiss that asks for proof or makes a point. It’s the kind that says we are here and means home is with you. She answers with the same relief, the same kind of hunger that has nothing to do with starving and everything to do with coming in from the cold.
I lift her, and she laughs into my mouth—soft and surprised like joy snuck up on her. Her legs hook around my hips without a pause. I carry her down the hall, bump my shoulder on the doorframe because I’m not looking where I’m going. She’s looking back at me, and I swear I feel something in my chest settle into a fullness like never before.
The bedroom is dim. The blinds are half-closed, a sliver of moonlight laying an silver line across the floor. I set her down on the edge of the bed and step back just enough to see her. She reaches for me anyway, a little half-grab at my shirt like maybe I’ll forget how to be here if she gives me too much space.
“I’m right here,” I tell her. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“I know.” She swallows. “Me either.”
I strip my tee over my head and it’s the first time taking off a shirt has ever felt like laying a weapon down. Her hands are on me right away, mapping, confirming—shoulder, chest, the old scar near my ribs that Tommy Boy gave me when I was fourteen. She touches it and I catch her hand and kiss her wrist because I’m not defined by my scars, not the one there or the one on my face.
“Tell me if you want me to stop,” I say, the promise as much a habit now as locking the door.
“I’ll tell you if I want you to stop,” she echoes, mouth tipping, brave. Then, she winks, “But, I won’t want you to stoop.”
We take our time. We unbutton and untie and unhook like people who don’t mind that the best parts of a ritual are the slow ones. There’s heat, but there’s also quiet threaded through it, a knowing that makes my hands gentler than they’ve ever been and somehow more certain. I can’t stop kissing the corner of her mouth. She laughs once when I do it again, and I memorize the exact sound because I want to hear it for the rest of my life.
When I lay her back and the light decides to climb up her throat and rest there, I have to close my eyes for a second because there’s only so much a man can look at and keep the primal need to claim at bay. She touches my face, thumb roughing along my cheekbone where Brian’s open palm left a red imprint last week that’s gone now. Her eyes say she remembers and she’s here anyway. My chest hurts in the best way.
Full.
We fit. That’s the simplest way to say it. Not because of bodies—bodies can do all kinds of trickery and call it fit. We fit because my breath finds hers without thinking, because her hands know where to go like they’ve been keeping a map I didn’t see, because every time I start to push, she meets me there with a yes that isn’t hurried, just sure. I ask her things without words—this, here, like that—and she answers with her mouth, with her hips, with her whole damn self. It turns the world into a small bright place that doesn’t ask for anything except the truth of this minute.
When it’s too much to keep quiet, when the heat climbs and the room narrows and my name in her mouth does that thing to my spine that I’m never going to pretend I can fight, I hold her hand. She squeezes back like she’s anchoring me on purpose, like she knew the tide would pull hard right there. It does. We go with it.
Later, when the noise eases and the air cools, I’m on my back with her sprawled half across me, hair everywhere, one leg tangled with mine like she’s improved upon the concept. My heart is still knocking at my ribs, but it’s not trying to get out. It’s trying to settle in.
We don’t rush to fill the quiet. The fan ticks; the house breathes. I reach for the sheet and pull it over her shoulders because I know she runs cold when the sweat’s gone. She hums, lazy, pleased, and burrows closer like she wants to live just like this forever.